No economic crusade had ever been so rapid, gigantic and revolutionary. Trades unionism had taken decades to make head where the Agrarian movement took years. The One Big Union of the Reds, anarching against all Government as it is, merely applied the principle of direct action which the farmers had taught them by suggestion in the unofficial parliaments of the prairie. The Agrarian is himself a One-Big-Unionist. His concern is not with wages and hours, but with exports, imports and elections. The Agrarian will not strike. Crerar knows that. He must not tie up communities and stop trade. He must work through Parliament. His aim is to establish farmerism as the basis of the nation. His creed is, that no matter what use we make of raw material, cheap power, manufacturing experience and capital, Canada's greatest revenue and export production must be in the farm; and that therefore national legislation must gravitate about the farmer's garage.
This thing came to a head in a part of the country which contains less than one-sixth of Canada's total population, and more than half of them Canadians only by immigration. The one biggest man in the whole movement, besides Mr. Crerar, the man who practically elected the new farmer Premier of Alberta by appointment, is an American born. H. W. Wood, the Czar of Alberta, came as a farmer in search of cheaper land from the Western States. He is a good citizen, and as much entitled to play strong-arm in our politics as any native Canadian is to enter the Cabinet of the United States. But as a rule a free people resent men from other countries agitating for revolution on behalf of an original small minority in a part of the country where industrialism can never become more than a sideshow in the business of production. A people of national consciousness do not relish the idea of a minority group organized to the last man and the last acre, trying to organize a nation-wide group in provinces where the factory and the mine and the fishery are at least as important as the farm.
The whole plan smacks too much of engineering. It is a case of complete, almost Teutonic, organization masquerading as a sort of democracy, but in reality a controlled tyranny whose aim so far as at present defined, is to establish group government under a camouflage of the National Progressive Party, and by means of the power so obtained or by alliances with some other group, to upset the whole economic structure which it has taken fifty years to build up. No true citizen will object to farmers in Parliament and many of them. None but a slave will consent to a Parliament dominated by any group, whether farmers, manufacturers, lawyers or labourites. Democracy means free government on behalf of the people; not on behalf of a great group which arrogates by organized majorities the right to represent the people. Agrarianism is not a nation-wide interest. Quebec has more to hope from the Government now in power than from the farmers. Ontario cannot elect a clear working majority of farmers. It is the West and the West only, which has become Agrarianism rampant. And according to the new officialdom of the West the farmer must save us all. Elect him to Administration and he will open the golden gates of real prosperity by establishing a maximum of free trade, on the assumption that our present protective investment in great railways (two of them bankrupt), in banks, industries and speculative land is all wrong.
The prospect glitters. Mr. Crerar is not dazzled. He sees with a calm and collective gaze into the future. He contemplates with profound elation the scrapping of our present system built by experience, and the setting up of another which makes theories a substitute. Nothing is difficult to a revolutionist. Crerar's success in building Agrarian grand opera is a mere augury in his mind to still greater success in rebuilding a nation, which he thinks is the same thing because the farmer is the nation; and a nation is the easiest thing in the world to revolutionize so long as you do not obliterate its institutions. We are not expected to abolish Commons, or Cabinets, or even the poor old Senate—until further notice. Mr. Crerar may need them all in his business. "For this relief much thanks!" Mr. Crerar is not to be nicknamed Cromwell.
The repeal of the Underwood Tariff and the Agrarian majority in Medicine Hat gave him great joy. The prospect for a farmer victory in the general election is to him almost certain by some form of coalition—perhaps with the Liberals; possibly with Labourites. In 1920 a man very close to Crerar estimated a return of 75 National Progressives in a total of 235 had the election been held at that time. Since then farmer prospects have bulled on the market. Alberta has gone Agrarian, following Medicine Hat. Organization has been extended. The old Liberalism on the prairies has been absorbed. Dafoe, of the Free Press, has swung into line with Crerar. There is prospect of the Government winning some seats in the West, as there is of the Liberals fielding candidates who will not be elected. Ontario is already a loose-jointed but effective part of the movement. Business is not good. A time of trade depression has always been a good time for a change of government, even along orthodox lines. The present economic aftermath of destructive war and a large element of I-Won't-Work labour along with high wages no matter what else falls, must look to Crerar like a good time to make us all believe that we shall all get through to Canaan if we follow his Ark of the Covenant. He is able to assure us of cheap clothes and furniture and machinery, because the farmer needs these things in the production of food, which must not become too cheap or the advantage will be lost. What is to become of our industries is not clearly stated; but if living is to be so cheap we shall probably not need employment except on the farms; though under free trade we are told that industry, free to flow, is sure to locate itself at the point of advantage in material, power, transportation, and getting to market. In fact some free traders blithely tell us that once you get rid of tariffs, living becomes so cheap that people naturally flock to the free trade country, and industry is bound to follow the people; therefore free trade will give us factories as we need them.
There is no end of the mirage for your head and morass for your feet once you begin to consider the possibilities of a revolution. We had somewhat the same experience forty odd years ago in the forests of smokestacks supposed to spring up in the wake of the National Policy. It took a long while and much hard patient work to get those smokestacks. Now we have got them as part of our national equipment, along with great water powers and long-haul railways and centralized banks and a number of trusts and an undeniable number of dear manufactures under a tariff—and Mr. Crerar purposes to abolish the whole thing, to begin all over again as it was in the beginning, except that even then if the farmer had lost his market town on Saturday he would have been in a very bad way for his Sunday clothes.
In short, Crerar proposes one more revolution, whether by one fell swoop or by a slow process of getting us used to here a little and there a little more—we do not know yet. What we do know is that he proposes to govern this country by a huge economic group that used to go to Ottawa as delegations; that in his opinion the real Capital of Canada is not economically Ottawa, but the ground floor of the Grain Exchange Building in Winnipeg.
We may not all have been reared on the farm, but be it known to all of us, our natural gravitation is back to the land.
Not many years ago also it was said that one large nation would Boss the world; later that Soviets would do it. Both the Boss nation and the Soviets seem to be reconsidering the contract. The world is a perversely complicated technicality.
Meanwhile Crerar smiles when the Premier (by appointment) calls the Agrarians "a dilapidated annex" to the Liberals. He thinks he knows better. He smiles even more sarcastically when he sees Mackenzie King chortle over that amusing fiction. He may have some use for King. If the Liberal leader will be reasonable he may permit him to merge his party with the Agrarians. If not he may threaten to rob him of Mr. Lapointe and Quebec, and let him see how he will like that.